MakePascal identifier (the XmlSerializer way)

Note: this entry has moved.

In a previous post, I proposed an implementation of a simple method to make the first letter of an identifier uppercase, to get a pseudo PascalCase from an xml name. I've found that a better and more consistent way is to reuse the method used by the XmlSerializer to build the code identifiers, which is System.Xml.Serialization.CodeIdentifier.MakePascal(string identifier)

The class also exposes MakeValid and MakeCamel methods, which are usefull too. MakeValid is automatically called by the other two.

The pascal casing implementation is the following (reflectoring - that is, using Reflector):

public static string MakePascal(string identifier)
{ 
  char ch1;
  identifier = CodeIdentifier.MakeValid(identifier);
  if (identifier.Length <= 2)
  {
    return identifier.ToUpper(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); 
  }
  if (char.IsLower(identifier.Chars[0]))
  {
    ch1 = char.ToUpper(identifier.Chars[0], CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    return string.Concat(ch1.ToString(), identifier.Substring(1)); 
  }
  return identifier; 
}

Using the ToCharArray() approach looks to me like a little more efficient string handling. The code above, near the end concatenates two strings, building a third one which is returned. If it used something like the following, it would save those two temporary strings:

  if (char.IsLower(identifier.Chars[0]))
  {
    Char[] letters = identifier.ToCharArray();
    letters[0] = Char.ToUpper( letters[0] );
    return new string( letters );
  }
}

By the way, it looks like readers' concerns with regards to I18N are non-issues, as the .NET class uses the same approach I showed, basically making a unicode Char uppercase. Finally, note that this is not actually PascalCase, but only FirstLetterUpperCase, although such a method name wouldn't be cool at all...